Loud Cars Are Now a Thing for Rich Guys

I've never much cared for British autowriters' observations on American culture—most of the time they are based on the same kind of ignorant, stereotypical thinking that was once considered the sole province of the "Ugly American" abroad—but I remember very well the trenchant one-liner that appeared in the pages of CAR around the time I started reading it, perhaps in 1989 or thereabouts. "Only the poor Americans," the writer noted, "drive the really cool cars."

It was a laser-sharp insight, given the car market of the time. The Big Three were nearly completely committed to anonymous front-wheel-drive downsized entries ranging from the K-car and its derivatives all the way to the unpleasantly runt-ish Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham. If you owed a car that was less than ten years old, chances are that it was some miserable square-rigged, strut-suspended penalty box that had been designed for a permanent fuel crisis that never truly arrived. Lincoln had a great advertisement around that time in which a bunch of country-club types couldn't figure out which of the valet-parked cars was a Cadillac and which was an Oldsmobile, and so on—but at the same time, they were trying to foist the Taurus-based Continental on customers.

Meanwhile, the poorest of us were rumbling around in American "gas guzzlers" from the Seventies. They were all over when I was a kid. I had a chance to buy a 1970 Monte Carlo for $800 when I was sixteen in 1988; my friend's sister bought a '71 Skylark in that sun-textured deep-green enamel of the era for less than that. They weren't exactly reliable, not in the current sense of the word, and most of them struggled to achieve ten miles per gallon. But with gas under a dollar per gallon, few people cared.

The roads swarmed with big boats, faded paint and bubbled Landau tops, visible rust all over the place. The exhaust systems, too, were rusted out, casualties of an era where the government didn't mandate long life for emissions-related components and as a consequence stainless steel was about as rare as hammered 24-karat gold beneath the floorpans of domestic cars. So when you heard a loud exhaust, particularly a loud V8 exhaust, you knew it was somebody who couldn't afford a modern V6 or four-banger with an intact muffler. Loud cars were for poor people.

And that's how it stayed for a few decades. New cars were quiet cars. The standard-bearer for this was Lexus, which prided itself on sound insulation. Everybody else followed the Lexus lead, even the Germans. Hell, even new Ferraris were quiet, which sparked a whole business in five-figure aftermarket exhausts to satisfy buyers who couldn't hear their Italian stallions over the roar of their P Zero tires.

There was a worldwide war on passenger-vehicle noise production.

It wasn't just changing consumer attitudes; there was also a worldwide war on passenger-vehicle noise production. One of the excuses widely cited for moving the 911 to a watercooled engine was compliance with Euro drive-by noise regulations that took effect at the turn of this century. This process has not halted, by the way. If anything, governments are becoming ever more stringent: the EU has tentatively proposed that new cars meet a 66dB limit in 2020, measured externally. That's about what you'd hear inside a 1990 Lexus LS400 at 70 mph. The future of all cars, upscale or affordable, new or (slightly) used, is a quiet one.

None of what you've read above, however, explains why nearly every single one of the performance-oriented cars I've driven lately has had what amounts to a "loud button" somewhere on the dashboard. With most cars, it's part of a "sport" or "track" mode, but with Jaguar, Mercedes-AMG and Porsche it's just a little button showing a picture of two tailpipes. In all cases, however, the resulting change in exhaust behavior is quite dramatic. Sometimes it's accompanied by snuffling, popping-off, backfiring, and all the other audible characteristics of an old-school race engine that has been tuned within an inch of its life; sometimes it's just the same exhaust soundtrack played at what sounds like twice the volume.

I'm not aware of any manufacturer that claims significant power gains from these open-pipes antics, nor can I personally discern any genuine difference in straight-line performance with any car that transforms itself into a "popcorn machine," as one of my fellow editors called it. And in all of the cases, whether we're talking Lamborghinis or Lotuses or Lexuses (Lexi?), the changes take place past the various catalytic converters and emissions hardware that account for most of the significant airflow reduction in the exhaust system. This isn't about performance. It's about noise, plain and simple.

After some thought on the matter, I've concluded that this modern era of obnoxious performance cars amounts to a sort of Gilded Age arrogance combined with some basic human psychology. It's not enough for the owner of a supercar or pumped-up coupe to make a visual impact on the common man as he trudges along to work or school or dinner; he also has to make enough noise that the aforementioned common man is forced to notice him. Owning an expensive car is no longer enough. There is so much wealth concentrated in so few hands that I've heard several people independently, and unironically, call the $200,000 Bentley Continental Flying Spur "The Beverly Hills Camry." The biggest problem Ferrari faces isn't selling cars; it's keeping them from being immediately resold again and again to a spiraling spectator market.

There's probably also a bit of cross-pollination with the so-called Rich Urban Biker mentality.

Having 100-decibel pipes on your expensive car makes you immediately noticeable. There's probably also a bit of cross-pollination with the so-called Rich Urban Biker mentality, in which various dentists and corporate board members spend their weekends oppressing pedestrians with ridiculously loud motorcycles that will vibrate the bones in a passer-by's chest. The man who owns both a $40,000 CVO Harley and an AMG Mercedes will not be pleased if the latter can't have the same impact out there on the boulevard. Why should Mercedes let an aftermarket exhaust supplier fulfill that need and reap all that sweet, sweet profit?

As to why people want to be noticed—well, I think that's as old as humanity itself. You're here today to read this column because you had a distant ancestor who was better at reproducing than his neighbor was. Chances are that guy was a bit of a showoff. A little noise, a little drama, a memorable entrance; these things improve your chances in the mating game. If you don't believe me, then why aren't you driving an Aries K to your high-school reunion or your Tinder dates?

And that's how driving a loud car became a rich man's game. But if you find this panoply of headache-inducing cat-back peacocking a bit too much, and you think that electric cars will bring it to an end, I should warn you: The same government bureaucrats that want to muzzle the internal combustion engine also want electric cars to make some sort of recognizable noise, beyond what they produce with their tires and rotating assemblies. You see, it's apparently common for pedestrians to just walk out in front of cars that are relatively silent. So there will have to be some sort of warning.

No doubt the suggested or even mandated electric-car warning noise will be some sort of chime or touch-tone inoffensiveness, possibly modulated at random so pedestrians can pick out the different cars around them and recognize the approach of one that puts them at risk. But I suspect that there will be a way to change that. If you have money, you'll have your own noise. Your own sound. I don't know about you, but I'm going to spend whatever it takes to get my autonomous transportation box to emit something besides the run-of-mill warble. I'm thinking the opening ten seconds of "Welcome to the Jungle," repeated on loop, at a volume roughly equivalent to what you'd have gotten in the front row at a Monsters Of Rock concert. These days of whining and roaring supercars? You'll miss 'em. I promise.

Born in Brooklyn but banished to Ohio, Jack Baruth has won races on four different kinds of bicycles and in seven different kinds of cars. Everything he writes should probably come with a trigger warning. His column, Avoidable Contact, runs twice a week.

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